Prayers

1999

A computer interface continually captures all the keystrokes typed on another computer within the same building. In real time, it translates this data to Morse code and broadcast this into the surrounding atmosphere
as Morse-encoded smoke signals (longer and shorter puffs of smoke from
a standard fog machine) through a vent or other opening in the building.
More and less active at various times of the day and its output more and
less visible under varying conditions, the apparatus is a kind of exhaust
system for the machine of daily industry. At the same time, it relates
today's electronic communications to previous revolutions in technology
and communications: telegraph, binary languages, steam power, smoke signals.
Everyday hopes and fleeting desires, channeled through the implements
of daily work, are briefly given form as they are dispersed into the world
at large, on the wing of a prayer.

Computer programming by Greg Langille. Produced with the assistance of the Ottawa Art Gallery for the exhibition "In All the Wrong Places".